too, giving them new meaning. If the
discovery of a cheaper rate on tripBAM
flips an out-of-policy booking over to
the company’s agency, Reynolds pointed
out, the company’s hotel attachment
rate will increase.

All About The Traveler

Now that NetApp’s travel program
has reached maturity, director of global
travel services Kathy Rust said, “We’re
looking at areas that … are more
focused on customer satisfaction and
responsiveness.” She wants her TMC
to come along for the ride, too, and that
means evaluating it beyond the terms
of the TMC’s standard service-level
agreement. The TMC may show her its
response time to calls, but she surveys
each traveler when he or she returns
from a trip and the entire group again
annually to find out more, such as how
well the agents serviced the travelers.
That kind of data can be of particular help to smaller companies, whose
spending levels leave them at the mercy
of agencies’ standard KPIs and SLAs,
said Schnitzer Steel Industries travel
program manager Steven Brossard.

Vincent Campana, vice president and
general manager of American Express
Global Business Travel’s global client
group said many companies are concentrating not just on TMCs’ call-response
times but also on the quality of those
calls. Amex GBT uses call-recognition
software so agents know who the caller is,
where the traveler is and what that traveler’s company travel policy is as the call
begins. It also helps the agent anticipate
the need to involve more agents, say, for
a rebooking if there’s a known weather
disruption where that traveler is located.

Other KPIs that focus on travelers’interests are emerging, he said, suchas itinerary tracking, communicatingin emergencies and completeness oftraveler profiles, all in the name of dutyof care. And then there’s sustainability,which is in everyone’s interest. “It’s nothyped anymore, but more and more arerunning those reports,” said TorstenKriedt, vice president of innovationand intelligence for BCD Travel andits Advito consulting arm, of a risingdemand for carbon reporting.

The focus on traveler satisfaction and
travelers’ needs could filter into buyers’
formal evaluations of suppliers. “If we
put a service quotient into our pricing
model, we might see the tables turn as
to who the best carriers are,” said ACT
senior manager of corporate travel Jennifer Steinke. “What are the benefits as a
traveler? If we start to combine all those
things, we might start to see a dynamic
new way of managing our programs.”

A Different Kind Of Data

None of this is to say traditional KPIsare history. Savings, compliance andsupplier efficiency remain relevant,Campana said. “Standard KPIs, in thetraditional sense, are something westill see. They’re good for reporting anddriving metrics in the business, andthose KPIs drive dashboards for differ-ent audiences.”And yet, the pool of available data isdrifting; companies always have mea-sured what has already happened, butsoon they will seek data that informstheir future actions. There’s IBM’s Wat-son technology—a descendant of thesame artificial intelligence that won Jeop-ardy in 2011—which can process mas-sive quantities of information and, usinglanguage skills for both input and output,deliver intuitive (i.e., humanlike) answers.It’s been used to cull the reams of medicalpapers published every month and helpmedical professionals make diagnoses.In travel management, then, perhaps itcould pinpoint the precise optimal lead-time for purchasing airfare. Like price-monitoring tools, that could renderadvance-purchase KPIs obsolete.

In use in the travel industry alreadyare BCD’s Decision Source tool, whichpools data and runs algorithms on thatdata to understand how, say, changing acompany’s business-class policy wouldimpact both the financial bottom lineand travelers. “In the past, we had to useExcel and a lot of error-prone applica-tions. Now, we can make it prescriptiveand show the areas KPIs can influence,”Kriedt said.

Omega World Travel’s Omegalytics
reporting system uses predictive analytics to prompt changes in buying behavior. And Travel and Transport has developed a tool that aggregates travel data
and external information like fuel prices,
airline operational data and weather
data to set the stage on which travel
buyers’ decisions will play.

As KPIs evolve, it’s becoming clear
that the very nature of the information
travel buyers can track will change. If
today’s challenge is corralling existing
information to aid decision-making,
tomorrow’s potential will be accurately
predicting future data.

Tips For
Selecting KPIs

• Determine to whom you will be
reporting data, and decide what
KPIs would be most relevant to
each audience. Focus on what you
plan to communicate to engage
your stakeholder.

• Understand how KPIs contribute to
a collective picture, not just what
the number looks like solo.

• Design program goals first, and
determine KPIs that advance them.

• Bring in a wider range of data than
what your suppliers provide. Hotel
data, in particular, might give a
view of only a small portion of
your program.